# mysql memory questions

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-memory-questions/1198>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [June 26, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-memory-questions/1198 "2009-06-26T16:43:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![craig\_h](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@craig\_h](https://forums.percona.com/u/craig_h)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-memory-questions/1198/1 "2009-06-26T16:43:18Z")

</div>

I am trying to work out what memory the following uses on the server, either ram or hard disk space  
i want to find out what memory for the following key\_buffer\_size and sort\_buffer\_size and myisam\_sort\_buffer\_size

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vgatto](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/vgatto/32/748_2.png) [@vgatto](https://forums.percona.com/u/vgatto)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 6:09pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/mysql-memory-questions/1198/2 "2009-06-26T18:09:07Z")

</div>

If I understand your question correctly, everything you’ve listed refers to in-memory (RAM) buffers. The only time disk will be used for these is if you don’t have enough RAM, and your operating system begins swapping the contents of RAM out to disk.
